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A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK

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Over to Siddharth Varadarajan for today’s Cable

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Snapshot of the day

February 19, 2025

Siddharth Varadarajan

After a wait of more than two weeks, the Bharatiya Janata Party finally decided that Rekha Gupta would be the Chief Minister of its government in Delhi. She is a first-time MLA, a former leader of the BJP’s student wing in Delhi as well as of its Mahila Morcha, or women’s wing, and a former councilwoman. Gupta will be the second successive female incumbent, replacing the Aam Aadmi Party’s Atishi as CM and the fourth woman to run Delhi, the other two being Sushma Swaraj of the BJP and Sheila Dikshit of the Congress.

The BJP won the assembly election earlier this month with 48 out of 70 seats but with no clear front-runner for the coveted post, the high command, i.e. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, got to do what they love doing: hand-picking a loyalist. A distinctly unhappy sounding Parvesh Varma was forced to say he was happy at Gupta’s selection. Varma – a rabble rouser whose hate speeches